While the Jewish people, and particularly their religious leaders in Jesus’ days on earth, were evidently scrupulous in avoiding anything connected with literal idols, they were, nevertheless, guilty of disgusting practices of self-idolatry, disobedience, hypocrisy, greed, and falsehood, and Jesus said that, like their forefathers, they had turned the temple into “a cave of robbers.” (Mt 23:1-15, 23-28; Lu 16:14, 15; compare Mt 21:13 and Jer 7:11, 30.)